These walls

Im safe here, protected by some invisible barrier against the world.  Inside these walls my son lives on through memory.  His pictures hang off the walls and litters the tables.  We mention his name as casually as we mention what we should have for supper.  Anyone who enters here knows that Marcellus is discussed openly, freely, almost as easily as if he was here, pooping in his diaper as we swoon over him.  We do not hide him, we talk about him constantly.  We talk to him constantly, keeping our conversations in polite language just in case he is listening for fear of him learning a dirty word up in Heaven.  We also have an unspoken rule of crying wherever, whenever, and for whatever reason we choose to cry over.  Tissue boxes run a plenty here, and when one is out of reach our shirts, blankets, or even the dog make an acceptable substitute.  Marcellus is here, inside these walls, forever. 

Outside however he becomes much more abstract.  He is a memory, an event to people.  A definition of suffering for some, a point of strength for others.  He is mentioned a lot less when we are outside these walls.  People will come up to us and ask how we are doing but they will not mention his name because of some sort of cultural code that we do not talk casually of the dead.  I do not know how to breach these walls with him, to carry his memory with me so openly and freely as I do inside this house.  I cannot start a conversation as "my son is Marcellus, he died almost 5 months ago, now what do you want me to help you find?"  No one is going to come up to me and say "I see you are in grief, tell me something about your son."  Even my Mom has trouble mentioning him directly to me.  I can hear she is uncomfortable talking about him but she will listen to me, not that I think she does not care for him.  It hurts her too to hear me in pain, and for her to lose her grandson, she just deals with things differently than I do. 

I wish I could bring his memory outside these walls as easily as bringing a baby in a car seat would be.  Maybe thats why I find it troubling to leave them, why this house comforts me so.  I miss him, I am still very much in a lot of pain over him.  I do not expect this pain to leave anytime soon.

Wheelbarrow

My take on grief is like this.  When you find out your child has died you pick up a wheelbarrow holding a pile of small rocks.  At first this is so overwhelming because you realize you have to push this wheelbarrow for the rest of your life.  Then day by day for the first month or so the wheelbarrow gets lighter and lighter because you get used to it.  And then you start to think that 'this isnt so bad, I can do this for the rest of my life.'  Little do you know that you have just been carrying your shock around because in the span of a short time your grief dumps an almost immovable pile of baseball sized stones in your wheelbarrow.  Every bit of your body strains against this load and you start to realize how incredibly difficult this is going to be.  A little bit each day if you work at your grief you take one or two rocks off your pile, some days you put some back on.  If you stop grieving you set your wheelbarrow down but it will be waiting for you to pick it back up, there is no walking away from it. Some day years from now your wheelbarrow will be empty, you have wiped it clean of even rock dust accumulated from years of hauling these rocks around.  You have reached a sort of peace with grief, but even then you still have to push the empty wheelbarrow around for the rest of your life.

Right now the wheelbarrow is chock full of rocks and sometimes it feels like people are throwing them at me just in spite.

5 Month Birthday

Its the 28th again, and that means a monthly birthday for my boy.  We are still very much in that age where birthdays go by month until some point in time when we start counting by years.  5 months today, just think of how much he would have grown.  How big he would be, the facial expressions, the coo's, laughs, giggles, little things I miss and I never even heard or seen them.  But these are not the things we are focused with on his birthday.

We are focused on things to remember him by.  In the next few months we have a lot of things coming together that will show the world that my wife and I love our son more than we love ourselves.  That we miss him so terribly much that it is impossible to describe.  We are putting in his headstone in the end of May, a beautiful dark blue stone without too much flashiness yet so much personalization.  As much as I will hate to see his name carved into eternity I want him to be justifiably marked the same as any other person in that cemetery.  A month from today we are marching for him at March of Babies in Durham.  We have raised way more money than I could have thought of and it is truly humbling to know that so many people have come forward in support and share how he has touched their lives as well.   And in less than two hours we are driving to a neighborhood park where we are getting a tree planted in his honor!  It is a maple tree with a plaque and its being put in by the parks system here.   He will have a space in Raleigh were we can go to honor him! 

But I would trade all this in for the chance of spending his 5 month birthday playing with him on the mat, taking a picture of him and posting it on the fb for our friends to see how well he is doing, maybe even catching a birthday nap.  Hearing him laugh, coo, giggle.... Thats what I want for his 5 month birthday.

I want a baby

I want a baby, bad.  Not just any baby, my baby.  Do not expect me to be running around Babies R Us like its Black Friday and every baby is up for grabs, I want to put in my time and do it right.  But I want it now, I hate this waiting game life plays with us and says 9 months till its ready!  (Or 7 months if you're Marcellus.)  But I guess it is necessary and adds to the old excitement of having one. Everyone sees a baby bump and goes bonkers, "oooh is this your first one?"  "do you know the sex yet?"  "can I touch it?"  Questions we got with Marcellus and questions we will get again, and since we will be walking around without him, people will naturally assume that it is our first.  It isn't.  I have a son, a beautiful, wonderful, perfect little angel who watches over me every day.  How do we tell people that?  Do we lie and say 'yes' and beat ourselves up later?  Or do we figure out an answer that honors him and satisfies the question without the awkward 'I'm sorry' bullshit we put up with.  I guess we have to figure that out if we are lucky enough to get pregnant.  I say lucky enough because we know now how much this baby things is up for chance. 

We are not guaranteed a baby, pregnancy after the first trimester does not mean that no matter what we are bringing a bundle of joy home.  Pregnancy now means 9, or 8, or hope not 7 months of worrying, wondering, high-risk doctor visits, cervical ultrasounds, progesterone, prostaglandin, and on and on. Pregnancy no longer means 'I cant wait to meet him/her', baby showers, the carefree attitude we had last time.  But even though pregnancy has changed, and it will be hard, I want to do it.  I want to support my wife no matter what throughout it.  I will not complain like I did last time when she was laying on the couch and I had to fetch her water or food.  I will gladly help her in any way I can. 

I will wait for my rainbow baby, and when I get him or her I will love them the way Marcellus showed me!

Pain, pain, and more pain

I was laying in bed and thinking about my family last night.  How each member of my immediate family has some sort of pain inflicting them.  My wife and I of course have the debilitating acute pain of Marcellus leaving us, My brother and his wife just lost their first child to a missed miscarriage, and my Mom just had major surgery and will be recovering for six weeks.  I think about all of them a lot and their pain while not trying to put mine of the pedestal.  Sure I would take major surgery for the rest of my life to keep Marcellus around, and we can empathize with my brother and sister in law a little bit on loss and grief, I just do not know if they understand the complete magnitude of pain we have suffered.  In fact, most days I cannot believe it myself.  I sit wondering a lot how I even managed to survive such an event.  I understand now why my brain put me in shock for a month, if it had not I would have lost it.  Watching Marcellus die was literally more pain than one body can handle at one given time.  His departure meant that every aspect of our lives are going to be tinged with this knowledge, this underlying factor that he left us and we are grieving parents.  Any pain we hear about from here on in we will unknowingly compare to our pain and therefore our reaction will be based on that. 

My pain has been different lately, in the last week or so it has manifested itself quietly inside me.  I carry my pain now as a tumor, a silent rogue ready to spread at a moments notice.  I go to group but I feel less like talking, I cry a lot less now.  Maybe I am just taking a break or maybe my body is resting me for the coming months when some people say it gets worse.  Ick, get worse?  How can this get worse, how can I stand to look at his mommy fall apart and my heart absolutely break for her.  How can I look at other babies and other pregnant people and not want to throw things at them.  How long can I keep this pain inside myself and not let it affect me negatively. 

The short answer of course is "get it out,"  let the pain flow out of you through constructive and healthy ways.  Be more mindful of it.  But its so tiring, the pain is so draining that I want to do other things with my life than just sit and be in pain!  Let me be numb for a while so I can rest my body and accomplish some other things in life and have a reason for all this damn pain!  I will come back to it, this pain is cyclical.  My family will experience even more pain and that will open these wounds like a scab being ripped off.  I am not done, far from it. 

But through all this pain, numbness, and grief I have seen some sheds of hope.  Sheds that our live together and as a family will become a new whole.  Marcellus left, died, croaked, kicked the bucket, cashed in his chips, passed on, passed away, went to be with the lord, etc.  Those are all euphemisms for him dying but not leaving.  Our new whole will be with him as it should have been 4 months ago.  He is the only family member not feeling pain, he is helping us through ours and will continue to do so for the future as an integral part of this family, he is still with us.

I am sitting here, drinking the beer I brewed for Marcellus to share with people when they came over to visit him.  It is a gorgeous day and I just got brewing for the first time since he was born.  I had  the recipe all weighted out ready to go before he was born but then all that fell to the wayside after he was born. 

Brewing today was a mix of emotions for me.   I feel guilty for actually doing something I enjoy, something I feel is selfish.  On the other hand I know I cannot let his death dictate my life.  If he would have lived I would have found time to brew, sure it would not be that often but my wife would have given me a morning to do it...maybe.  But now I can brew how ever much I want to.  In fact I could brew again tomorrow if I wanted to, after work.  And I could brew as much as I wanted for however long until we deliver again.  And that really sucks.  I do not like all this free time, all the countless hours on netflix, being able to cook nice meals, taking the dog out for long runs, brewing beer.  I want to be busy, to be eating food thrown together in a haste.  I want to wake up to a crying baby, to be too tired to brew or even to drink. 

Marcellus told me it was ok to take time for myself.  While brewing a bunch of hawks flew overhead and landed in the trees.  They talked to me, one even squeaked like he did.  I feel it was him telling me that I can do some of these things I love, as long as I do them with him.  And I did, he was here with me the whole time, he never left my mind.  It was kind of nice to be with him like that, my brewing buddy!  So I named the beer after him, Black Hawk Ale.  Hopefully it is good, the beer I brewed for him is really good.  I like having something I created for him around.  I will be sad to see the last one go. 

I miss him terribly, I have so much to write about, I could go on forever!  But I think I will just take in some fresh are and calm sky, and watch the hawks circle overhead.  I love you Marcellus!

4 Months Today

It seems like an eternity, Marcellus being gone this long.  We often ask each other how in hell we are able to survive nonetheless function through this?  We read a lot of stories of other parents who lost children and babies and we think to ourselves 'how could anyone survive that?'  Then we have to take a step back and remember that WE are surviving that now, that our lives are tragic and unchanging, that other people hear about Marcellus and ask themselves how we manage to get through every day. 

The getting through part of everyday is not hard, its the getting through part with our sanity that is the kicker.  Everyday I wake up I think about him, then I think about him gone, then I just say 'you know what, I am going to give up on today.'  But I then realize that doing this will not help my grief in any way so I decide to suck it up and do something 'productive' and 'worthwhile.'  I do schoolwork, I go to work, I take care of the dog, I cook, I clean, and I make sure my family has what it needs to function.  But believe me, the only thing I really want to do all day is sit on the damn couch, eat pizza and drink beer, and watch cartoons all day. Living a normal existence after losing Marcellus is hard, it is damn hard.  If my six months ago self looked at me now and how much I get done in a day he would be disgusted.  He would think that I am some lazy ass bum.  And he would have some choice words as well.  But I know why I cannot get everything done that I want, because what I want I can never do.  I want to be busier than ever taking care of a small baby!  I want to be running errands late at night, I want to be changing diapers and endlessly doing piles and piles of laundry.  I do not want to wake up with the option of beer, pizza, and Futurama OR being productive.  I should not have another option besides being busier than hell!

Our new normal lives have taken a toll on us, and we decided to take a little trip out into the mountains to promote clarity and relaxation. We are staying at a bed and breakfast, it has a jacuzzi tub and, until last night I did not realize this, FREE BREAKFAST!  I was laying in bed thinking, wow this is a really nice bed, I now know where the bed part of bed and breakfast come in, but why do they include the word breakfast in their title?  It took me two seconds later to realize we do get yummy breakfast with our stay and I am super excited.

Today we planned on going hiking and screaming if we wanted to, well we decided to save that hike till tomorrow.  Someone phoned ahead and we get a picnic basket with our hike tomorrow!  Today we are going to just explore the town, get a massage, and just do what we want.  It is his 4 month angel birthday today, I cannot stop thinking about him.  Four months ago he died, leaving me a broken shell of a man.  I crumbled at the site of his mother holding him while he took his last tired breaths.  My heart exploded out of my chest and I let the world see my despair.  How could he die?  How can any baby die?  It is such a sick and tragic even to take the life of such a small, innocent being.  Marcellus had no chance in his life, he had only 12 days to receive as much love and caring as we could dole out to him and we did.  We loved him immensely, we still do.  Everyday we love him more and more because everyday we are finding out what his death means to us and more importantly that before he died he LIVED.  I am not just a baby loss daddy, I am a DADDY!  I changed his diaper, I held him, I experienced the absolute complete joy of him being born and the doctor telling us its a boy!  "Its a boy, its a boy, we have a boy!" My wife exclaimed through clouds of sedation, I was stunned as I looked at her elated face, she went through so much to get here and she did it the way only the best mother in the world could do, I am so proud of both my wife and my son!

I love my family, it is not perfect but no family is.  I love it because it is my family, even though Marcellus died 4 months ago today, he made it our family.  He will forever be the firstborn child, my reason for being productive in life.  My reason for loving my wife so unconditionally and my family so patiently.   I love you Marcellus!  I miss you so terribly much!